I spent most of the entire night in the ladies' room with my friend Riddhi adjusting the safety pins that were holding up the lavender strapless gown I found on sale at Nordstrom, never imagining that I would actually meet a boy interested in me. The Treadwell gym was decorated with paper snowflakes dipped in glitter. A DJ had set up a booth near the doors to the locker room and for the most part, girls were dancing on one side of the room and boys were clowning around on the other.
And then, the impossible happened: a slow dance came on, and a tall guy with blue eyes and thick dark hair asked me to dance. My circle of friends was floored – none of us had been asked to dance all night. After all, we were only sophomores – but oddly enough, one of the cutest guys in the entire Treadwell gymnasium was asking me to dance.
While we were dancing together I was really nervous; I wasn't sure where to put my hands and I was afraid of stepping on his feet. We barely even really danced, more just kind of rocked back and forth slowly. He asked me if I was having a good time. I said sure. That was the full extent of conversation.
And at the end of the song he planted a soft, wet kiss on my lips. Then he walked away. The whole deed was done before any of the chaperones even noticed.
I've replayed that kiss in my head about fifty million times since it happened, sometimes wishing it had been Todd Burch instead of the mystery St. John's guy. Later, I heard that my anonymous kisser's name was Kevin and that he was very much already someone's boyfriend; Emma Jeffries', to be exact. There really is no such thing as a popular clique at Treadwell. At a normal high school, the girls who are most well-liked by boys are typically the most popular, and at Treadwell there are no boys around to determine status. And most of the girls at Treadwell come from well-to-do families, so money isn't even really a status symbol; we all share the same lousy dorm rooms and wear the same ugly uniforms.
But Emma Jeffries is the closest thing we have to a popular girl. She's very tall, very blond, and has a set of six-pack abs that would make an Olympic volleyball player jealous. Her father is a retail tycoon and owns Hunter Lodge, an international chain of fashion stores that sell sportswear. Last year Emma modeled for the catalog and her sunburned sneer was on its cover.
So I'm not sure if Emma Jeffries made up a lie that Kevin only kissed me because he's a huge Pound fan and couldn't pass up an opportunity to kiss Chase Atwood's daughter once he heard that I was a student at Treadwell, or if he actually kissed me for that reason. Either way, the entire event was very unexpected and weird, and ultimately doesn't really count as a first kiss.
Not at all.
So it would be a lie to say that finding another boy to kiss wasn't on my mind basically… all the time. In my opinion, my perfect boyfriend would also be a musician, perhaps a pianist, someone who came from a very normal, traditional family. I would take weekend leaves from school to visit his normal family in their totally normal house in a place like New Hampshire or Connecticut. His parents would dress like normal parents and have real jobs and value education.
The topic of my own family would never come up, and I would never, ever have to go into detail about finding my mom passed out in her bikini on the couch after parties, or catching C-list actors sneaking out our front door at dawn.
Where I was going to find this boyfriend, I had no idea. Boys are strictly forbidden on campus grounds when school is in session. This is not to say that sex is entirely absent from dorm life; a lot of girls have boyfriends back at home. Occasionally Allison and I went to parties over the summer where there were boys, but even when we had conversations with boys, they never led anywhere. So at fifteen, I was desperately inexperienced.
The first time I caught a glimpse of Jake, my first thought was definitely not that he was boyfriend material. We had landed in Jacksonville and immediately boarded an enormous tricked-out bus with POUND painted in cursive letters on its side. The bus was more fabulous than any house I had ever entered; it boasted two bathrooms with showers, both tiled with Italian marble, and rows of bunk beds in the back. There was a large flat-screen television already playing an episode of Dora The Explorer for Kelsey's benefit when we boarded, and she plopped herself down on a small pink beanbag chair as if all of this luxury was commonplace for her.
When the bus rolled into the parking lot at the hotel where we would be staying, I noticed a blond guy around my age pulling a heavy cardboard box out of the trunk of a Saturn. His hair hung straight nearly to his shoulders, and he had a deep tan, dark enough to suggest he was a surfer. He looked a little out of place in the parking lot of such a fancy hotel, and not to be a snob or anything, but the Saturn was by far the least fancy car in the lot packed with Mercedes' and Lexus'.
And that was it. It was hardly love at first sight, but I found myself wondering who he was and if I'd see him again.
After settling into the hotel suite we would call home for the next three days, I witnessed what I would come to know as the "tour routine." It was nearly nine in the morning. Jill's traveling yogi, Herschel, a very thin bald man who was shirtless and shoeless and wore spandex pants, arrived for Jill's morning stretch. Dad took that as his cue to find the hotel gym for his morning five-mile run, which he tried to always squeeze in before traveling to the new venue in any city for light and sound check.
"You're more than welcome to join me," he offered on his way out of our suite in his track pants and fancy running shoes.
"I don't have any workout clothes," I said. In addition to not having proper exercise attire, I had never set foot in a real gym with treadmills and weight machines before. There were a number of things I did not have with me, and considering that walking over to the nearest drug store to obtain them as I would have back in Los Angeles was no longer an option, I had no plan in place for how I was going to get them. Specifically, my need for tampons, acne medication, and a new stick of deodorant was becoming urgent, along with the need for a variety of other items that I really did not want to have to ask my dad or Jill to provide.
"Taylor, if there's anything you need, you just let Tanya know. If you need some workout gear, she can send a production assistant out to a mall to pick something up for you."
I must have looked surprised, because he smiled, and added, "While we're on the road we have a team to take care of necessities. It's their job to make sure we all have everything we need. Just don't get too spoiled!"
Spoiled? How could I possibly have had an entire team of workers dedicated to shop on my behalf and not get spoiled?
Keith took up residence on the floral couch in the living room of our suite, talking to local publicists and reviewing the band's rider. The rider was the list of necessities and niceties that the band requested in their dressing rooms during the tour. I only caught a quick glance at it, but it listed cases of ice cold Diet Pepsi, fresh fruit (melons balled, not cubed), fresh greens but only dark lettuce and not romaine, no fewer than three gallons of iced tea with lemon, a bowl of room-temperature hummus with whole wheat crackers, fresh vegetables and cubed cheese (Monterey jack, mild cheddar, pepper jack, and Swiss).
And those were only the mandatory items for the dressing room; the entire touring staff was nearly ninety people and the requirements for meals served at concert halls were insane. Right down to ensuring that there would be no fewer than twenty-seven vegetarian meals for every serving.
I announced to Jill that I was going down to the lobby to explore. She seemed to have no problem with that but warned me not to leave the hotel.
The hotel was ridiculously luxurious and it was right on the beach. I sat down in a lounge overlooking the expanse of white sand and breaking waves. A waiter asked me if I would be having breakfast and told me I could bill it to my room.
"Sure," I said. "We're in the Atlantic Royal Suite."
The waiter then – I'm not kidding – bowed and said, "I'll be right back with your menu, Miss Atwood."
I was so flattered that I didn't correct him by informing him that my legal last name
is not Atwood, it's Beauforte.
I ordered myself a meal and was sipping a freshly squeezed orange juice, watching the waves roll into shore, and thought to myself, I could get used to this.
Just then, I noticed the same blond guy from the parking lot sit down a few chairs over from me in the empty lounge. He was reading a dog-eared copy of The Martian Chronicles.
We made eye contact and he nodded.
"Good morning," he said.
"Hi," I responded. "Summer reading list?"
The Martian Chronicles had been on my summer reading list the previous summer. I had found it kind of scary and it freaked me out.
He looked at his book as if he had no idea how it had come to be in his hands. "Uh, no," he said, as if suddenly ashamed to be reading. "I go to public school. No summer reading lists. I just really like science fiction."
There was an awkward gap of silence, during which I was ashamed to have assumed that all high school students are assigned summer reading for their AP English classes, and he seemed ashamed that I assumed he was reading for something other than enjoyment.
"Are you Taylor?" he finally asked.
He was much cuter up close. His nose was peeling, and upon closer inspection it looked like he had suffered a bad sunburn that was fading into a tan. He was wearing a well-worn t-shirt that was loose on him over old jeans, and Vans without socks. He hardly looked like the kind of guy who would be curled up with a science fiction novel.
"I am. How did you know that?" I asked. It's not like I was suddenly that famous, like random strangers on the street knew who I was.
He shrugged. "I'm with the tour," he said. "I sell t-shirts for Audiostorm Productions. I'm Jake."
I stood up, moved over two chairs, and sat down in the chair next to his. "Taylor," I said, and then realized duh, he already knew my name. Like I said, I had limited experience talking to cute guys.
"Sorry to hear about your mom," he said.
His comment took me so off-guard that I didn't know how to respond. It suddenly hit me all too fast that just two weeks ago I was at home, in my own house, with Mom drifting through the house in her flip flops, and now I was here – in Florida of all places, at a beachside resort, and my mother's ashes were at a mausoleum in Burbank. My eyes filled with tears before I could get a grip on myself and stop.
"It's OK," I said, wiping a rogue tear off my cheek with the napkin I had been using as a coaster for my orange juice.
"It's not OK," he corrected me. "It must suck."
He was looking at me so directly that I wanted to shrivel up and disappear. Of course, he was right. I had said it's OK out of a fast habit that had formed over the last week. But still, who was he, a total stranger, to correct me?
"Uh, yeah. It sucks. She died and now I'm…" I waved my arms around the lobby. "Here. I don't know what to make of it all. Everything's going kind of fast."
The waiter returned with my hot plate of food and instructed me to enjoy. I felt a little ashamed of what an enormous pile I had ordered – eggs, toast, strips of bacon and wedges of melon.
"Want some?" I offered Jake.
"Nah, the roadies have a buffet every morning," he assured me, and then took a wedge of honeydew anyway. "But I can't turn down honeydew."
I heard the familiar click of high heels on the tile floor approaching down the grand hallway, and turned to have my first experience with what I would learn to recognize as a Pounder.
Pounders are groupies, essentially. Women who follow Pound around on tour, typically getting drunk at the shows, flirting with the band at parties, tailgating in parking lots, often finding their way backstage, making a nuisance of themselves with the wives. They're usually middle-aged, although some are younger, and many have been Pounders since my dad's band first became famous sixteen years ago.
I guess you could say my mom was the original Pounder.
"Jake, I have been looking for you all over," the woman said impatiently once she reached us. She was tall, nearly six feet in her white sling-back heels, and wore a gauzy cover-up over a white bandeau bikini. Her hair was permed and frosted, and she wore full makeup even though it was only nine in the morning. I guessed her to be in her mid-forties, and maybe a little too wobbly to be walking around in a bikini so proudly.
She was the kind of woman Allison might have called a "hot mess," and with shame I realized that she reminded me a little bit of my mother.
"This is Taylor," Jake told the Pounder in a slow, patient voice to soothe her mood.
"Hi," I said shyly.
The woman's irritability immediately vanished; she smiled warmly and extended a perfectly manicured hand. "Why, Taylor, it's so nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you, too," I said, still unsure of who she was.
"I was so terribly sorry to hear about your mother's passing. You're a very lucky girl to have a dad like Chase, though, honey. He's a lovely man."
I questioned Jake with my eyes about how this woman might know my dad, but he looked away.
The woman returned her attention to Jake. "I'm starving, honey. Come on up back to the room as soon as you can."
She wiggled back down the hall, her heels clicking, and Jake rolled his eyes apologetically. "My mom," he explained.
In that instant I knew we'd be friends. I knew exactly how he felt in that moment, having been there myself, having a mom who was both fabulously cool for her age and at the same time, a complete embarrassment. I knew what it was like to have the mom that everyone thought they wanted, the hot mom, the mom who lets you drink or smoke at home if you want to, the mom who doesn't enforce curfews.
"I should go," he told me. "We usually don't stay in the same hotel as the band, but there aren't many options in Jacksonville. She likes when I bring her meals from the roadie buffet."
I nodded, trying to understand exactly what Jake was doing there. Did he really have a job with the tour? Was his mom just a groupie? A room at that hotel must have cost hundreds of dollars a night.
"Nice meeting you," I said, meaning it. "Are you going to be with the tour all summer?"
Jake shrugged as if touring all summer was not exactly his idea. "I guess."
He turned to leave, and then said, "Don't worry. Chase is a cool guy."
I finished my breakfast in wonderment. How on earth did this guy know my father better than I did? And what was he implying that I had to worry about?
CHAPTER 5
On our first night in Jacksonville, Pound performed a sold-out show. Of course, the opening band, Sigma, was a little more my style, and I got butterflies in my stomach thinking that there was a strong likelihood I would be exchanging words with Brice Norris at some point that summer. Throughout the show I was curious if I would get a chance to walk around by myself and look for Jake, but the opportunity never presented itself.
My dad was really a marvel on stage. Electrifying. For the first four songs I stood in the front row with Jill and then she led me backstage. From there, looking out across the dark crowd, I could see women tearing their shirts off and screaming the lyrics to the songs until they were red in the face.
When the band performed Lovergirl, one of their famous love ballads, my dad invited one of the Pounders from the first row on stage to slow dance with him. She was taller than him by at least five inches in her high heels and was literally crying with joy as they danced. I noticed that Jill was kind of smiling during this song, but in a way that made it look like her jaw was locked in position.
Later, when they played Always Yours, my dad invited Jill out on stage and sang to her. She didn't necessarily look any more comfortable during that. She was wearing a hot pink terry cloth sundress and both she and my dad were so sweaty under the hot stage lights in the humid Florida air that they glistened.
When Jill stepped out on stage, Kelsey immediately reached for my hand in her absence. It was sticky and hot and I didn't really want to be holding it, but it would be kind of cruel to drop a little kid's hand, so I held on.
After the show and back at the hotel, Jill asked if I would mind watching Kelsey so that she and Dad could have dinner alone.
"We haven't had much private time," she claimed. "You don't have to get her ready for bed or anything, just make sure she uses the potty an hour after she's done eating. We'll be back in a few hours."
Sure, I agreed. How hard could it be, watching a little kid? Well, for starters, she didn't want the soy chicken fingers that Jill had sent up for her from room service. She wanted to try my linguini alfredo, and I let her. Then she liked it, so I gave her more. I left the room service trays in the hallway for the hotel to clean, and set Kelsey down on the sofa in front of the television.
"Ou est Maman? Ou est Papa?" she asked repeatedly, practicing her toddler French lessons.
I did not dare reply with my inferior two-years-of-private-school-French for fear of being upstaged by a five-year-old. "They're having dinner at a fancy restaurant. Now tire-toi."
I forgot Jill had told me to make Kelsey to go to the bathroom, and I realized a few minutes too late that she had simply wet herself on the leather couch. Kelsey learned a few new English words as I cleaned up the puddle and changed her into her pajamas. It had been nearly two hours since Dad and Jill had left the hotel room but it was kind of nice having them gone.
"Who is your Dad?" Kelsey asked me after I placed her in bed. We would be sharing the suite's second bedroom, each having our own queen-sized bed. This was a little annoying; my dad had not mentioned that I'd be bunking with the little brat all summer.
"My dad is your dad," I said, the words sounding foreign to me. "We have the same dad."
"Then who is your mommy?" Kelsey asked after a moment, trying to sort it all out in her head.
"My mom is in heaven," I told her.
Somehow the words got me choked up.
"What happened to her?" Kelsey asked.
"She had an accident and died," I told her, not sure if it was really appropriate to be talking about death with a five-year-old. "Remember? You came to the wake with us."
The Rock Star's Daughter (The Treadwell Academy Novels) Page 5